


Reindeer Games

by liam22



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: F/M, holiday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-29
Updated: 2008-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:23:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1693166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liam22/pseuds/liam22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas was their season</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reindeer Games

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: thank you Maddie! :D  
> Prompts: Christmas for sylaire_chall and the prompt candy cane came from cameroncrazed

He follows her from a distance, humming to himself, and she never knows. She’s too busy weaving in and out of crowds, picking a tie out for Nathan, pearls for Angela, and a teddy bear in a nurse’s costume for Peter. She doesn’t murmur a holiday greeting to anyone. So cold and aloof – it’s very Petrelli of her – such an interesting dynamic, watching his cheerleader turn into the person Father Dearest spent so much time and energy protecting her from.

He watches the snow fall lightly and collect like dust in her hair. Does she remember? Because he does, he can’t get it out of his mind.  
Ever since that first stolen kiss – cherry drops and peppermint – he’s always thought of Christmas as _their_ holiday. All the lights and the glitz surrounding something holy and so easily corrupted.

Yes, Christmas fit them perfectly.

And they’ll celebrate Christmas together again whether she knows it or not.

\---

_Claire Bennet has a nice boyfriend._

_He’s blond, polite, and wants to be a lawyer just like Nathan. He holds her hand and kisses her cheek. He takes her out to expensive restaurants for dinner and never forgets to bring roses. A dozen blood red roses every time. She tries not to wrinkle her nose in distaste; it’s not like he knows any better._

_Besides, everyone thinks he is perfect for her._

_Her father loves that he’s consistent and stable, no criminal record to speak of. Her mother loves how polite he is. The Petrellis love that he comes from the right family. She loves how he never notices when she comes back late at night smelling like cigarettes and tasting of another man._

_But most of the time, she hates him for it._

\---

Pavarotti is crooning away Christmas carols on the radio. Fairy lights reflect off artfully placed tinsel, sending pretty shadows bouncing around the large Petrelli sitting room. But, he’s too busy reliving the surprised look on her face when Mother welcomed him in to really appreciate to the irony of the lyrics at that moment.

She is sucking obscenely on a candy cane when he catches her eye again. The champagne bubbles, spilling sticky onto his fingers as Mother pours him another glass. She raises an eyebrow and he tilts his head towards the door, indicating he wants her to follow him.  
She does. She can’t not.

It’s funny how they never worry about her now. He’s as good as neutered with his new good boy attitude. He’s no threat at all – not as he tightens his hand around her neck with bruising strength and lifts her up against the wall to his eye level; not as she struggles helplessly against his grasp, hate rampant in her eyes; not as he seals his mouth over hers in an even angrier kiss, one she doesn’t fight.

“Ave Maria, gratia plena, Maria…” he starts to sing in a whisper against her lips. She frees her hands, interlacing them with his hair and tugging hard. But he doesn’t stop. “..Ave, ave dominus, tecum…”

She kisses him then, trying to drown out his words. Their tongues fight for dominance in a slip slide against each other that shouldn’t feel as familiar as it does (it’s only once a year). And for a minute she can forget. He lets go of her neck to press her harder against the wall.

His hand feels indecently hot against her stomach as he finishes the rest of the song. “Benedictus fructus ventris tui.”

Just down the hall, her cardboard cut-out boyfriend remains wonderfully oblivious.

\---

_The first time, nearly three years before, was her fault. She had been determined to seek him out, to punish him. She didn’t buy the act he was playing up for their family at all. They didn’t understand; he would always be a monster._

_She finally corners him in the study. She tries not to notice how long he seems spread out as he is on the lounge, and can’t help but laugh bitterly at the book he’s reading. A Christmas Carol, really Sylar. And still, she thinks it’s somehow appropriate. He’s been her walking image of Jacob Marley lately, haunting her, invisible chains and all._

_“What are you really doing here?” she asks even though he doesn’t bother to look up at her. “Do you really think anyone actually buys this rehabilitation shit you’ve been pouring on so heavy?”_

_“Claire-Bear,” he mutters low in his throat. She doesn’t need the masks he puts on for everyone else. Hell, he suspects she doesn’t even want them. “Peace on Earth. Good will to men. Where is your Christmas Spirit?”_

_He gets up off of the couch with a shake of his head. He stands towering over her until their boots touch. He leans closer, his breath hot on her ear, and for a second he finds it hard to believe she is letting him get that close. “Am I not your Christmas miracle, Babydoll?” he whispers, and then, with a wink, leaves her stunned frozen._

_Later that night, he kisses her under the mistletoe – a quick peck on the lips with the whole family watching that sent a shock of electricity straight down her spine. He blushes a fetching pink for their on-looking family, but she can’t forget the wicked gleam in his eyes that promised more_.

\---

Her skirt is hiked up high around her waist. Her back is arched off the wall he was pinning her to. Two doors down, the family is opening presents and sipping champagne.

She was drinking hot chocolate, stirring it with a candy cane. And he savors the peppermint taste on her tongue. It’s just another reason why she belongs out here with him, instead of two doors down, where everyone else thinks she should be.

She grabs his hands away from her stomach and brings them up under her top, to rest on her bare breasts. She wants this, him, more than anyone in that other room could even fathom. She kisses his lips, his teeth. She makes him groan.

She’s down on her knees a second later, unbuckling his pants and sucking on something other than a candy cane. His hand fists dangerously tight in her hair and the pins that held the delicate knot of hair up scatter everywhere. He’s so unlike the man she was supposed to be doing this with – controlling her movements and not warning her when he ultimately comes. It only makes her try harder to get him to loose control.

Even as she licks and fondles, he doesn’t stop sighing, “Benedicta tu in mulieribus”.

\---

_The rest of the year, he prides himself on being able to stay away from her. There are some slip up, of course. Not even he is perfect._

_The Boyfriend takes her out on Valentine’s Day, and he kisses her in the restaurant bathroom with Nathan Jr. ordering their appetizers. She spends her birthday parading around in a tiny bikini that makes him want to drag her behind the pool house and give Claire her 'gift' in private. He’s always meant to ask how she explained away the ripped bikini top she could no longer wear. He didn’t even need to get her alone at the annual Halloween Masquerade Ball. The chance to dance with her in public is one too precious to give up. Even Peter doesn’t recognize him when she introduces him as Zane._

_In December, when candlelight catches off the melting snowflakes in her hair, making her look like every bit of the angel he knows her to be, he just can’t make himself stay away from his prize. Christmas is_ their _holiday, after all._

He pulls her into the butler’s pantry only a few minutes after appetizers are served. He doesn’t care the slightest that her corn-fed, all-American, boyfriend might have saw them.

“I getting married,” she gasps out. She still doesn’t pull away from him. She never does. Not anymore.

“I haven’t asked you yet.”

\---

Claire is engaged to be married the next Christmas - Saint Patrick’s cathedral on Christmas Eve. He’s sure it would have been a lovely ceremony; Mother had her best planners working on it, after all.

It’ll be such a terrible thing to worry Mother when she doesn’t show up. Dozens of staff attendants search the church with no luck. 

Angela finds her a half an hour later with a shard of glass buried in the back of her head, blood staining her gown a brilliant red.  
It was Claire’s fault really, he reasons, watching the scene from afar.

He’d snuck into her bedroom months earlier when he learned of the date of occasion, and warned her not to go through with it – not on that day. Christmas was their holiday. But, she had ignored him, and for that sin, she would pay the price.

She wasn’t even surprised when he showed up right behind her. She’s a vision in white so virginal that he’d be willing to believe the lie. No one else should get to see her like this. He raises up her skirt and tears off her panties. He has her one last time, before making sure that no one else can have her again.

“Something to remember me by,” he whispered against the healing bruise on her neck right before she died. “Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.”

\---


End file.
